An Indiana law banning gender-affirming care for minors can remain in effect, a federal appeals court has ruled months after allowing the ban to take effect.

A panel of judges on the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Wednesday that the law’s restrictions are within the purview of the Indiana General Assembly and do not infringe on the constitutional rights of transgender children, their parents or medical providers, The Times of Northwest Indiana reported.

Wednesday’s ruling follows a February decision by the Chicago-based appeals court that allowed the law to take effect by removing a temporary injunction that had blocked the law. The new ruling vacates that injunction entirely and definitively authorizes state officials to enforce the law.

Indiana’s law was enacted in spring 2023 amid a national push by GOP-led legislatures to curb LGBTQ+ rights. It was slated to go into effect on July 1, 2023, but the month before, U.S. District Court Judge James Patrick Hanlon issued an injunction preventing most of the law from taking effect. Hanlon blocked the state from prohibiting minors’ access to hormone therapies and puberty blockers but allowed the law’s prohibition on gender-affirming surgeries to take effect.

Hanlon’s order had also blocked provisions of the law that would prohibit Indiana doctors from communicating with out-of-state doctors about gender-affirming care for their patients younger than 18.

Since 2021, more than 20 states have enacted laws restricting or banning such treatments, even though they have been available in the United States for over a decade and are endorsed by major medical associations. Most of those state bans on gender-affirming care for minors have been challenged with lawsuits.

An election-fraud crusader in Nevada withdrew his latest federal lawsuit in an ongoing feud with county officials in Reno after their lawyers threatened to seek sanctions for filing a baseless complaint laced with “rantings of a conspiracy theorist.”

But Robert Beadles, a wealthy ex-California businessman and right-wing activist who has embraced many Republicans’ disproven claims of election fraud, is vowing to continue his legal battle in state court. He has filed a new lawsuit in Washoe County District Court with similar allegations of fraud and other wrongdoing.

Beadles, who once briefly ran for Congress in California in 2010, made his money in construction, software, real estate and cryptocurrency investments. Now affiliated with the conservative blog Operation Sunlight, he has helped lead attempts to recall or otherwise oust numerous county officials since he moved to Reno from Lodi, Nevada, in 2019.

He claims the election system is rife with “flaws and irregularities” that robbed him of his vote in 2020. He lost another lawsuit last year that sought heightened observation of Washoe County’s vote-counting process.

Federal and state election officials and former President Donald Trump’s own attorney general have said there is no credible evidence the election was tainted. The former president’s allegations of fraud were also roundly rejected by courts, including by judges Trump appointed.

The Reno Gazette Journal first reported this week that county lawyers sent Beadles letters warning of potential punitive action unless he dropped his lawsuit, which was moved to U.S. court last week because of related federal jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled for the family of a nursing home resident with dementia that had sued over his care, declining to use the case to broadly limit the right to sue government workers.

The man’s family went to court alleging that he was given drugs to keep him easier to manage in violation of his rights. The justices had been asked to use his case to limit the ability of people to use a federal law to sue for civil rights violations. That outcome could have left tens of millions of people participating in federal programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, without an avenue to go to court to enforce their rights.

The Supreme Court has previously said that a section of federal law — “Section 1983” — broadly gives people the right to sue state and local governments when their employees violate rights created by any federal statute.

The court by a 7-2 vote reiterated that Thursday, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that Section 1983 “can presumptively be used to enforce unambiguously conferred federal individual rights.” Both liberal and conservative justices joined her majority opinion while conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

The court had been asked to say that when Congress creates a federal spending program — giving states money to provide services such as Medicare and Medicaid — they shouldn’t face lawsuits from individuals under Section 1983. The court rejected that invitation.

The specific case the justices heard involves the interaction of Section 1983 and the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, a 1987 law that outlines requirements for nursing homes that accept federal Medicare and Medicaid funds. The court was being asked to answer whether a person can use Section 1983 to go to court with claims their rights under the nursing home act are violated. The answer is yes, the court said.

Spain’s Constitutional Court said Tuesday it would consider a legal challenge lodged by the far-right Vox party against a new law extending rights for transgender teenagers and encouraging tolerance for sexual diversity in schools.

The wide-ranging LGBT rights law passed in February allows any Spanish citizen over 16 years to change their legally registered gender without medical supervision. Minors aged 12-13 still need a judge’s authorization, while those between 14 and 16 must be accompanied by their parents or legal guardians. Previously, transgender people needed a diagnosis by several doctors of gender dysphoria.

The Constitutional Court issued a statement confirming it had considered a legal brief lodged by Vox lawmakers and would analyze alleged violations of parental rights, the right to religious expression, freedom of speech and equality of all citizens before the law.

Vox said the recent legislation, which was promoted by the far-left United We Can party within Spain’s governing coalition, introduced “state interference in areas that should remain strictly personal.”

The far-right movement argued that a parent’s right to oversee the religious education of their children, which is guaranteed in the Spanish constitution, was violated by the introduction of material in schools aimed at teaching children to respect and tolerate sexual diversity.

It also attacked the introduction of gender self-identification, which allows anyone to change their legal gender without prior authorization from a doctor or judge, endangers women’s rights. It referred to the case of a convicted rapist being held in a women’s prison in Scotland while transitioning. That inmate was transferred to a men’s prison after being assessed by prison authorities.

Vox further hit out at a clause that allows intersex children aged between 12 and 16 to request surgery, as long as they are considered mature and informed enough to do so.

Vox has stoked culture wars in Spain by resisting any criticism of Spain’s 20th-century dictatorship, denying that domestic violence is a problem and linking unauthorized migration with increased violence. It has pushed a so-called “parental pin” policy in regions where it is influential, allowing parents to opt their children out of classes that they consider against their principles.

A federal appeals court sided Friday with the Justice Department in a case that could have upended hundreds of charges brought in the Capitol riot investigation.

The decision, however, leaves open the possibility of further challenges to the charge of obstruction of Congress, which has been brought against more than 300 defendants in the massive federal prosecutions following the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.

In a 2-1 ruling, a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said a lower court judge was wrong in dismissing the charge in three cases in which the judge concluded it didn’t cover the defendants’ conduct. Those defendants may ask the full appeals court or the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.

The charge of obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries up to 20 years behind bars, is among the most widely used felony charges in the Jan. 6 cases. It has been brought against extremists accused of plotting to stop the transfer of presidential power from Republican Donald Trump to Democrat Joe Biden as well as in dozens of less serious cases.

Dozens of people have already pleaded guilty to the charge or been convicted at trial. The Justice Department has argued that the offense — punishing anyone who “corruptly” obstructs or impedes an “official proceeding” — clearly fits the conduct of the rioters who halted Congress’ certification of Biden’s 2020 election victory.

But U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols found that prosecutors stretched the law beyond its scope to inappropriately apply it in the these cases. Nichols ruled that a defendant must have taken “some action with respect to a document, record or other object” in order to obstruct an official proceeding under the law.

The Justice Department appealed, arguing that Nichols’ interpretation of the law was too limited.

In her appeals court ruling, Judge Florence Pan noted that Nichols — an appointee of Trump — was the only lower court judge overseeing Jan. 6 cases to rule that way; every other judge who considered it said that it was correctly used.

Three Hong Kong activists from a now-defunct group that organized annual vigils commemorating China’s 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters were convicted on Saturday for failing to provide authorities with information on the group in accordance with a national security law.

Chow Hang-tung, Tang Ngok-kwan and Tsui Hon-kwong were arrested in 2021 during a crackdown on the city’s pro-democracy movement following massive protests more than three years ago. They were leaders of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China before it disbanded under the shadow of the Beijing-imposed law.

The alliance was best known for organizing candlelight vigils in Hong Kong on the anniversary of the Chinese military’s crushing of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests. Critics say its shutdown has shown freedoms that were promised when Hong Kong returned to China in 1997 are eroding.

Before the group voted to disband, police had sought details about its operations and finances in connection with alleged links to democracy groups overseas in August 2021, accusing it of being a foreign agent.

But the group refused to cooperate, arguing police were arbitrarily labeling pro-democracy organizations as foreign agents. It added the police did not have a right to ask for its information because it was not a foreign agent and the authorities did not provide sufficient justification.

A federal judge said Friday Alabama prisons remain critically understaffed, with court filings showing the number of officers in state lockups has continued to drop despite a court order to increase numbers.

The prison system has lost more than 500 security staff employees over the last 18 months, according to court filings.

“We had horrendous understaffing in this department and something has to be done,” U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson said during a status conference in the long-running lawsuit over prison health care.

In 2017, Thompson found that mental health care in Alabama prisons is so inadequate that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment. He said understaffing is one of the root issues and ordered the state to increase the number of corrections officers.

William Van Der Pol, a lawyer representing inmates in the lawsuit, told Thompson that Alabama has fewer correctional officers than when the litigation began or at any point where they could find comparative numbers.

The state has used pay raises and recruitment efforts to boost officer numbers, but has been hindered by a tight labor market, Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the state argued.

Thompson asked the two sides to compare current staffing levels to what they were in 2014 when the case was filed.

Van Der Pol, an attorney with the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program, told Thompson that based on available numbers the prison system is at its “lowest number in history” for officers working at major facilities.

A federal court jury has decided that New Jersey police did not violate the civil rights of a man who died shortly after a physical altercation during his arrest 7 1/2 years ago.

After a trial, jurors in federal court in Camden sided with the city Oct. 19 in a lawsuit filed by relatives of 32-year-old Vineland resident Phillip White, according to court records.

Officers had responded in March 2015 to reports of a man “freaking out” on the street and eventually subdued White after a struggle captured on video by a bystander. The video showed an officer hitting White and a police dog being used during the arrest.

White died on the way to the hospital, and an autopsy cited a toxic level of the drug Phencyclidine, or PCP, in his system. Injuries from the K9’s actions were noted but deemed superficial by a medical examiner.

Cumberland County prosecutors said in 2016 that a grand jury had declined to indict the two Vineland officers involved. White’s relatives filed a $10 million lawsuit against the city and the two officers, one of whom was later dismissed as a defendant.'

“We believe very strongly in our client and our client’s cause, but the jury didn’t see it that way,” said Michael Galpern, an attorney for White’s mother, Pamela, told NJ Advance Media for NJ.com. He said the defense was considering whether to appeal.

An attorney for Vineland and its police department declined comment, NJ.com reported.

The U.S. Justice Department overreached in suing Mississippi over its mental health system, the state’s solicitor general has argued to a federal appeals court.

A Justice Department attorney countered that there’s ample precedent to show the department has the power to enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Wednesday in New Orleans. The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported that judges on the conservative court appeared receptive to limiting the Justice Department’s role.

A ruling against the department could ultimately push the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court in a case that could have nationwide implications.

The federal government issued a letter in 2011 saying Mississippi had done too little to provide mental health services outside mental hospitals. The Justice Department sued Mississippi in 2016.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves ruled in 2019 that Mississippi had violated the ADA by having inadequate resources in communities to treat people with mental illnesses.

Evidence showed people were repeatedly admitted to state hospitals for lengthy stays, only to later return to the hospitals without long-term improvement.

Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart — the same attorney who argued an abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court that overturned Roe v. Wade — told the appeals panel Wednesday that since Reeves’ ruling, the state has improved its mental health system. Stewart said limiting the federal government’s ability to intervene is important because lawsuits can cost states thousands of dollars.

When the U.S. Supreme Court repealed in June a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion, Wisconsin’s 1849 law that bans the procedure except when a mother’s life is at risk became newly relevant.

Republicans in the Legislature blocked an attempt by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers to overturn the law. Yet there’s disagreement inside the GOP over how to move forward when they return to the state Capitol in January.

The state’s powerful Republican Assembly speaker, Robin Vos, supports reinforcing the exception for a mother’s life and adding protections for instances involving rape and incest. Others, including GOP state Rep. Barbara Dittrich, say the law should stay as it is, without exceptions for rape and incest.

For decades, Republicans like Vos and Dittrich appealed to conservative voters — and donors — with broad condemnation of abortion. But the Supreme Court’s decision is forcing Republicans from state legislatures to Congress to the campaign trail to articulate more specifically what that opposition means, sometimes creating division over where the party should stand.

Dittrich says consensus among her Republican colleagues on an alternative to the 1849 law would be a “tremendous challenge.” “We once heard that the Democrats were the big-tent party,” she said in an interview. “Now I would say the Republican Party is more the big-tent party on some of these issues.”

Of course, supporters of abortion rights are now a distinct minority in Republican politics. Just two GOP members of Congress — Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine — publicly support passing legislation to reinstate the protections of a woman’s right to choose that the Supreme Court struck down in overruling Roe v. Wade. In Colorado, U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea is the rare Republican running this year who backs codifying Roe.

But the debate over even a limited set of circumstances in which abortion could be legal spurred some division within the GOP in Wisconsin and elsewhere.

In Indiana, after a decade of stalled legislation on abortion, empowered Republicans passed the first near-total abortion ban since the Supreme Court ruling. But even that measure drew dissent within the GOP. Exemptions for rape and incest up to 10 weeks prevailed after 50 Republicans joined with all Democrats to include them.

The Iowa Supreme Court on Friday cleared the way for lawmakers to severely limit or ban abortion in the state, reversing a decision by the court just four years ago that guaranteed the right to abortion under the Iowa Constitution.

The court, now composed almost entirely of Republican appointees, concluded that a less conservative court wrongly decided abortion is among the fundamental privacy rights guaranteed by the Iowa Constitution and federal law.

Friday’s ruling comes amid expectations that the U.S. Supreme Court will overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. If that happens, Iowa lawmakers could ban abortion without completing the lengthy process of amending the state constitution.

The Iowa decision stemmed from a lawsuit filed by abortion providers who challenged a 2020 law that required a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can get an abortion. A judge who struck down the law cited the state high court’s 2018 ruling. The judge also concluded that the law violated rules prohibiting passage of bills with more than one subject.

The state Supreme Court returned the waiting-period case to district court.

When organizers earlier this year settled on a summer opening for a new women’s health clinic in Wyoming, they felt upbeat about their plans even as they knew they would face opposition to what will be the only such clinic to offer abortions in the state.

There were the expected protests and harassing messages. Things got more tense after a leaked draft of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that, if finalized, would likely make abortions illegal in Wyoming and half of the states.

Then last week, their building was damaged by a fire police believe was deliberately set.

None of it has derailed plans to open the clinic — a rarity in heavily Republican parts of the United States where most abortion providers at the moment are fighting just to stay in business, let alone expand services.

“We can’t be bullied into submission,” Julie Burkhart, the clinic founder, said as she watched from across the street as Casper police and firefighters investigated the blaze.

For years, Wyoming prided itself on live-and-let-live Western conservatism that took a hands-off approach to setting social policy in government, abortion included. That’s changing, however.

In March, Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, signed a bill that put Wyoming among the states that would outlaw abortion should the Supreme Court overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that made abortion legal nationwide. The only exceptions would be in the event of rape or incest, to save the mother’s life or to save the mother from severe, non-mental health problems.

Gordon, who’s running for re-election this year, hasn’t made abortion and other culture war issues a feature of his campaigns or time in office. But a recent rightward shift of both the Supreme Court and state Legislature has elevated abortion into an issue in Wyoming.